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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with bread, currants, nutmeg, eggs, milk, and sugar, baked and served with a butter‑sugar‑cream‑sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Assemble

  1. Layer bits of white bread in a pudding dish.

  2. Sprinkle with well-washed currants and a good grating of nutmeg.

  3. Repeat layers, finishing with a top layer of currants.

Soak and bake

  1. Beat together 3 eggs and ½ cup sugar, then add 3 cups milk.

  2. Pour the mixture over the pudding and let it stand for 1 hour.

  3. Dot the top with butter and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat together 2 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon powdered sugar.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons cream and 2 tablespoons sherry to the sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it bakes.
Eggs
Set the custard, giving the pudding structure as it bakes.
Milk
Makes the liquid custard that moistens the bread and softens it.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds flavor to the pudding.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chew throughout the pudding.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, nutmeg, egg, sugar, milk, butter, sauce):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg, egg, sugar, milk, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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